SO I play PUBG mostly which is a game that relies a lot on your ping.
I live in South Australia and at least for us in the Australian and greater Oceanic region the ping has been absolutely shit for a while now.
Some people have mentioned that using a VPN can help with this.
When on an Oceanic server I get anywhere from 30-80ms ping.
On SEA / South East Asian I usually get up to 180ms (these are the most frequent match make servers until recently)
On SEA/ Asian (China/ Japan servers I think) I have been getting 250 up to 300 which I got first game today but that is the worst I have ever seen.
I have seen a few people suggest using a VPN so I’ve tried this today connecting from South Australia to NSW/ Sydney and this is giving me constant 180ms ping which is somewhat acceptable at least however my question is if its actually making a difference in game? I do seem to be picking up items quicker and opening doors quicker but I’m not sure if that is just confirmation bias.
Does anybody know if using a VPN is actually a good idea in this case?
Using a VPN sometimes can lead to improvements in ping times and multi-player gaming performance in cases where the network path/route which your ISP normally uses to carry traffic between you and the game server is either congested or unnecessarily long and circuitous.
So if there is a VPN server you can connect to which has a more direct and less congested route to the game server, then you may indeed experience performance benefits.
However, more often than not, VPNs usually add latency to your connection—meaning data packets typically take longer to arrive at their destination than they would normally because there is an additional step of having to route the packets to the VPN server before they can be routed to their final destination.
So pretty much the only case where you will see real improvement is if the added latency from routing your traffic through the VPN server is less than the amount of latency that is shaved off by the VPN having a less congested and/or more direct route to the game server (as compared to your own ISP’s path to the game server). What also matters is the latency between you and the VPN server—if your ISP’s path/route to the VPN server is congested or long/circuitous, this can also negatively impact performance.
So, it’s not the case that VPNs are a fix-all solution for latency/ping issues in multi-player games, and it’s not the case that all VPNs are the same.
There is a situation where VPNs can improve multi-player gaming performance, but there are also many cases where VPNs will add latency or otherwise negatively impact your multi-player gaming experience. There are many variables involved and the only way to know whether a particular VPN may improve your multiplayer gaming performance is to test the VPN out. You may find that some VPNs may improve your gaming performance while others may hinder it.
I also haven’t mentioned this yet, but having a consistent latency/ping (even if it’s a bit slower) can sometimes improve performance simply by making the game more predictable. Often what makes it difficult to compete in laggy multi-player games is the inability to predict the motion of people and objects in the came because of random lag spikes that are unpredictable and not possible to prepare for. When you have consistency in your latency/ping then everything is much more predictable and although you may experience some symptoms of a laggy game (like slight delays before you see visual confirmation of something happening), the consistency can help you adequately compensate for the delay and more accurately predict the motion of people/objects.
A VPN will slow your connection because it’s another bounce your connection has to do before it gets to your computer or out to the internet. Generally these days they’re good enough it’s not very noticeable, but the only time it would drastically increase your speed is if you were blocked or throttled from a region for some reason, and the VPN would trick them into thinking you’re from that region
In other words, try it out more yourself and find out, but generally no vpns don’t make things faster
Thanks for the detailed response, much appreciated!